The queen heard me with the greatest attention, and then said, “Have you yet writ to her?”

No, I said; I had had a little letter from her, but I received it just as the Duchess of Portland died, when my whole mind was so much occupied by Mrs. Delany, that I could not answer it. \ “I will speak to you then,” cried she, “very honestly; if you have not yet writ, I think it better you should not write.  If you had begun, it would be best to go on; but as you have

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not, it will be the safest way to let it alone.  You may easily say, without giving her any offence, that you are now too much engaged to find time for entering into any new correspondence.”

I thanked her for this open advice as well as I was able, and I felt the honour its reliance upon my prudence did me, as well as the kindness of permitting such an excuse to be made.

The queen talked on, then, of Madame de Genlis with the utmost frankness; she admired her as much as I had done myself, but had been so assaulted with tales to her disadvantage, that she thought it unsafe and indiscreet to form any connection with her.  Against her own judgment, she had herself been almost tormented into granting her a private audience, from the imprudent vehemence of one of Madame de G.’s friends here, with whom she felt herself but little pleased for what she had done, and who, I plainly saw, from that unfortunate injudiciousness, would lose all power of exerting any influence in future.  Having thus unreservedly explained herself, she finished the subject, and has never started it since.  But she looked the whole time with a marked approbation of my applying to her.

Poor Madame de Genlis! how I grieve at the cloud which hovers over so much merit, too bright to be bid but not to be obscured.

A distinguished astronomer.

In the evening Mr. Herschel(217) came to tea.  I had once seen that very extraordinary man at Mrs. de Luc’s, but was happy to see him again, for he has not more fame to awaken curiosity, than sense and modesty to gratify it.  He is perfectly unassuming, yet openly happy; and happy in the success of those studies which would render a mind less excellently formed presumptuous and arrogant.  The king has not a happier subject than this man, who owes wholly to his majesty that he is not wretched :  for such was his eagerness to quit all other pursuits to follow astronomy solely, that he was in

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danger of ruin, when his talents, and great and uncommon genius, attracted the king’s patronage.  He has now not only his pension, which gives him the felicity of devoting all his time to his darling study, but he is indulged in licence from the king to make a telescope according to his new ideas and discoveries, that is to have no cost spared in its construction, and is wholly to be paid for by his majesty.

This seems to have made him happier even than the pension, as it enables him to put in execution all his wonderful projects, from which his expectations of future discoveries are so sanguine as to make his present existence a state of almost perfect enjoyment.  Mr. Locke himself would be quite charmed with him.  He seems a man without a wish that has its object in the terrestrial globe.